The present invention relates to a juice extractor which can extract juice from fruits or vegetables to make fruit juice or vegetable juice.
Recently, as people's interest in health is on the rise, there is a high tendency that they will directly extract juice from the vegetables, fruits, grains or the like which have been purchased using a juice extractor and take the extracted juice at home. The development of household juicers is in continuous progress.
When juice is made using the juice extractor, draff or residue of a raw material put into the extractor gets caught in mesh holes formed on a mesh drum inside the extractor, leading to a degradation of performance and efficiency of the extractor. Thus, a user suffers from an inconvenience of having to frequently disassemble and wash the juice extractor to remove the draff inside the extractor. In addition, since thick juice extracted from fruits having a high viscosity does not flow downwardly smoothly, it is difficult to extract juice from the fruits high in viscosity.
As an example of a technology for solving the above-mentioned problems, Korean Patent Registration No. 0755440 discloses a juice extractor which includes a rotary brush configured to continuously sweep the outer wall of the mesh drum so as to continuously remove draff caught in the mesh holes and to allow thick juice having a high viscosity to flow downwardly smoothly.
However, this conventional juice extractor adopts a complicated structure in which a screw gear is mounted at a lower portion of a feed screw, an intermediate gear is rotatably mounted at the bottom of a housing, and a rotary brush gear is mounted at a bottom of a rotary brush main body so that the screw gear, the intermediate gear, and the brush gear are engaged with one another to thereby rotate the rotary brush.
The juice extractor having a gear engagement structure entail the following several problems.
First, a failure rate of the juice extractor is high due to gear abrasion and damage. In addition, three kinds of gears are required to be precisely engaged with one another, and thus it is not easy assemble them.
In addition, a food processing apparatus such as the juicer essentially requires cleanliness at the inside thereof with which food comes into close contact. However, food accumulatively remains behind the apparatus and the apparatus becomes dirty due to draff caught between a plurality of gear teeth of the gear structure, which makes it difficult to clean the apparatus. In particular, since the intermediate gear securely fixed to the bottom of the housing is impossible to disassemble, it difficult to remove fine draff or stain caught in tooth gaps of gears, which causes a problem in maintaining cleanliness.
In an attempt to solve such problems, there is a continuous need for a juice extractor which is fundamentally improved to be operated smoothly while excluding the rotational power transmission structure based on the gear engagement in a manner of rotating the rotary brush.
Meanwhile, juice is extracted from a raw material put into the juice extractor and draff remaining in the extractor is discharged to the outside through a draff discharge hole formed at a bottom surface of the housing and a draff outlet port extending outwardly from a lower portion of the housing during the operation of the extractor. In this case, when raw materials (e.g., salaries, pineapples or the like) having a relatively long, tough and fibrous texture are used, a problem may occur in that the raw materials are hanging caught in the draff discharge hole. Likewise, in the case where draff is caught in the draff discharge hole, it is difficult for the draff itself to escape from the draff discharge hole in terms of a discharge structure, and thus a bottle neck phenomenon occurs at the draff discharge hole. Consequently, the smooth discharge of the draff is further difficult and a draff accumulation phenomenon is aggravated.